Technical advances have pushed wireless technology into more mobile devices, opening up the marketplace for multimedia content in mobile devices. Consumers are demanding increasing levels of rich multimedia content, such as music, videos, ring tones, software, and games. Recent studies estimate that digital music will grow from 1.5 percent of all music sales in the US in 2004 to 25 percent by 2008. Other forms of digital content are also growing at comparable rates. Given these trends, it is inevitable that consumers will demand more elegant ways of enjoying the content they are acquiring.
Today, video clips of new events and trailers, entire movies, music, photographs, music videos, pod-casts, animated emails, educational multimedia content and much more are flooding the Internet and many consumers are downloading and saving this rich content. Especially with purchased content like music, games and movies, consumers want to be able to move content from device to device, and take it with them when they leave home. In today's mobile society, consumers balk at any limitations on where and when they might be able to experience their growing cache of rich multimedia content.
Unfortunately, several bottlenecks currently slow down the flow of multimedia content for most consumers. Practically all content must go through a personal computer, which must be cabled to other devices in order to transfer or share this content. As more wireless networks are deployed in homes and public places, and as WLAN technology is embedded into more CE products, consumers will come to expect access to their desired content through their wireless systems.
Wireless Mobile Devices.
Wireless mobile devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), Pocket PCs, laptop computers or other wireless enabled electronic appliances have continued to evolve in functionality, and the services that can be accessed through those appliances have continued to multiply. Cell phones in particular have become a popular device for the delivery of multimedia content. Multimedia content includes audio, such as music and ring tones, video, text, graphics, software, facsimile, and telephony. Commercially available wireless mobile devices have sufficient computing capacity, memory and multimedia features to enable the display of audiovisual content and execution of software. A number of services make use of packet-switched data services and compression algorithms to deliver audio-visual content to wireless mobile devices.
Content Transmissions to Wireless Mobile Devices.
Systems that distribute and display multimedia content such as entertainment and advertising have been described in published patent literature. For example, United States Publication Number 2004/0209649 (published Oct. 21, 2004) discloses a SIM card to enable cell phone users to receive a multimedia broadcast of their choice. U.S. Pat. No. 5,557,320 discloses a sender-subscriber based, transmission traffic control system for video mail, which includes the transmission of bulk electronic data primarily in the form of still or motion picture images, with or without audio track. United States Publication Number US2005/0130586, published Jun. 16, 2005, and owned by the assignee of the present invention discloses a personal base station (PBS) or mobile device having wireless video capability.
Content Transmission Technologies.
There are numerous solutions for the delivery of multimedia content to wireless mobile devices. At present there are three technologies being commercialized for the transmission of multimedia content to wireless mobile devices. “Content over Satellite” is a concept that utilizes the S-DMB standard to directly transmit a satellite feed to the wireless mobile devices. “Content over Broadcast” is based on the broadcasting handheld standard (DVB-H) that directly broadcasts to the wireless mobile devices. The wireless mobile devices incorporates a tuner to receive the broadcast signal. Another technology available for “Content over Broadcast” is Qualcomm's MediaFLO™ technology. “Content over Cellular” is an approach that is utilized by MobiTV and uses an Advanced Video Coding (AVC) also known as H264 or MPEG-4 Part 10 to compress the video. Content may be delivered at any bit rate, although presently bit rates of 60 Kbps, 95 Kbps or 128 Kbps are utilized. This technology incorporates a method to change the bit rate of the video stream based on the capacity of the cellular network. Another service that may be used to broadcast content is Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS). MBMS is a broadcasting service that can be offered via existing GSM and UMTS cellular networks. The infrastructure offers an option to use an uplink channel for interaction between the service and the user. MBMS implements multicast distribution though the core network instead of providing point-to-point links for each wireless mobile device. Alternately, Cell Broadcast may be utilized to broadcast content. Cell Broadcast is capable of broadcasting a single message directed to all wireless mobile devices in one or more radio cells.
Currently there are no commercial broadcast capabilities in US wireless networks. Today, if a cell phone user wants to purchase media such as a ringtone, song, game or graphic, there is no preview offered. While it is technically feasible, it isn't economical for carriers due to the one-to-one relationship for delivery and the expense associated. The content must be delivered to each individual user. Since most of the purchases are for the same “top” items, the same file is delivered multiple times across the network. Through the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) standards, there are mechanisms for enabling users to preview songs or games through the use of “rights objects” which manage access to the media, but these only apply to media that have already been delivered to the device.
One way of delivering content to a wireless mobile device is to transfer the data through the wireless network. This has a cost disadvantage. For example, a user who downloads a 3 minute video (encoded at 128 kbps) would have to pay over $28 in transport fees (at $0.01 per KB, a standard in the industry for pay per use KB rates) unless they had a data plan with their wireless carrier.
There is a need for a cost effective technology that provides the user of wireless mobile device with an opportunity to preview content before making a purchase decision for the content. There is a need for a cost-effective technology for the delivery of the same purchased content to a plurality of wireless mobile devices.